Course Design (6th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Real world of student's minds
Review: Always seems a bit arrogant when one claims to know "the real world of kid's minds." Also worth mentioning that "Understanding by Design" is really a modest variation of the behavioral approach to educational planning. That is: figure out what you can and will test for and then design instruction. "Course Design" proceeds from considerations of content and learners. Assessment is not the first consideration in the planning process. "Course Design" does incorporate brainstorming but the brainstorming is based on substantial content knowledge and grapples with what it means to understand content. Thus it is a book best used in planning to teach content area courses and units rather than skills. The real world of human minds is a world of ideas. Teachers need to grapple with issues that center on what ideas have power for their students, how do students learn and what does this suggest for how they might best be engaged in the teaching learning process. No book on how to "do" educational planning is perfect. I'd like teachers to have a book that engages them with substantial issues of content and what it means to understand rather than working backwards from "how am I going to test this stuff."

Rating:
Summary: completely out of touch with the real world of kid's minds
Review: This text bases the designing of curriculum on knowledge derived by a brainstorming event by the designer of a proposed course. The results of the brainstorming are then polished and refined until they become intended learning outcomes for students. Posner,et al. should realize brain storming can also lead to pooled stupidity- not what students need in the classroom. Instead of this book get "Understanding by Design" (Grant Wiggens and Jay McTighe- more recent and much more in sync with the world